Sunday, October 3, 2010

Invitation Only (2009)

Oh, what can I write? Invitation Only is a very brutal Taiwanese slasher with some very nasty gore and graphic nudity. It’s basically an excuse for showing beautiful people getting killed in various terrible ways. Bryant Chang is a nobody, he works in the office building of a huge company. One day the big boss himself gives him an invitation to a party for rich people. “Tell them you are my cousin”, so our hero takes his advice and do that.

What he does not expect is that the party is arranged to kill and torture poor people, in front of an audience of very rich, bored people. They’re tired of the lower class complaining and trying to steal their money, so now they’re doing something about it… Trapped in a big warehouse our young victims have to try to stay alive and not get caught and butchered…

Invitation Only is a nice production, well-shot and with OK acting. Bryant Chang gets a graphic nude scene together with Japanese adult star Maria Ozawa, which brings nudity for everyone. The rest of the actors are good, but never steps outside of the safety zone of unique and interesting acting. It’s shot on HD, but still looks a bit cheap here and there, even if the production value is good.

The first half feel more like a normal slasher, a guy with a white mask stabbing people to death in gory fashion, but then it takes a torture-turn and becomes even more sadistic. The gore and blood is very graphic and the effects are well-made and quite shocking.

The political message is quite strong, maybe a bit too much written clearly on the nose of the audience. It’s a revenge movie for what the rich, the capitalists of the world has done to the poor people, but hidden as a Hostel-style gore-movie. It’s interesting, because the message could be from a Chinese movie – but as we all know, Taiwan tries to be as separate as possible from the “dirty old man” in the north (as I heard some Taiwanese describe China). But don’t think so much about that, this is mainly a gory horror movie aimed at teens in Taiwan, much more than a political movie about class-struggle.